


The Flatness of Mountains

by kashinoha



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Abuse of symbolism, Character Study, Gen, M/M, but not really, carlos is confused, spoilers for episode 25
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-05
Updated: 2014-01-05
Packaged: 2018-01-07 12:35:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1119892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kashinoha/pseuds/kashinoha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos looks away as the teratologist laughs, wondering when the day will come when he wakes up with horns or a fifth DNA nucleobase or squamae that drips blue nitrate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Flatness of Mountains

 

 ---

 

Carlos knows there is something wrong with him, to _want_ to move to a place where you could cheerfully die at any moment. He knows this, and he knows that to live in a town like Night Vale you have to be pretty messed up.

 

He is messed up before he even gets there.

 

A degree in physics from the California Institute of Technology is not enough. Even a Ph.D from Harvard is not enough (though it does come in the form of a shiny black plaque with gold Helvetica lettering). Day after day Carlos stipples the blackboard with equations and grimaces at hands that are powder white from brittle and somehow greasy chalkdust. Things are perfect and stable and boring. Like flat soda.

 

“Why can’t you just be happy?” his colleagues ask him. They envy him. Carlos cannot imagine why. He doesn’t know what he wants to do. He only knows that he goes to bed with Coulomb’s Law running through his head and brushes his teeth in rhythm to Occam’s Razor the next morning and it is so unbearably flat.

 

So he begs and pleads for funding and moves to a place with no mountains but that is certainly _not_ flat.

 

During his first week in Night Vale Carlos concludes there is LSD in the sand. That must be it, yes. He sees things H.P. Lovecraft’s darkest subconscious could only dream of, and almost dies twice. He eats food that should, on a normal basis, kill him. He turns a shade darker from the sun despite that oddly colored cloud that hovers overhead and discovers that Big Ricos sells salty ice with their drinks.

 

His team covers the other four branches of the natural sciences, as well as some fields that no one outside of Night Vale would, in their right mind, sponsor. There is an engineer and an eremologist. The algedonics, diabologists, and parasitologists just seem to show up one day. Carlos doesn’t even want to know where the deontologist comes from.

 

But if he had known how well Night Vale pays their teratologists, he would have switched majors a long time ago.

 

He wants-- _needs_ \--to find out more about the origins of this town, but something about researching it seems unnaturally off-putting. Carlos knows the drill in Night Vale concerning malfunctions of the hippocampus. He is unsure if it is the Glow Cloud or the Subway or StrexCorp, but _something_ makes you not want to remember Night Vale’s shrouded past, or to consider it mundane enough to forget it. It is like trying to memorize all twenty-seven amendments to the US Constitution, Carlos thinks. You can, if you really want to, but why bother?

 

Most of Night Vale’s historical documents are no longer extant (on this plane of existence, at any rate), but Carlos did not get a Ph.D by simply waving his hands around. He gets his information.

 

And promptly forgets it. Perhaps it is for the better. Who really wants to read about nuclear bomb testing during the Second World War, or anti-radiation particles that tear holes in the fabric of reality, leaving it permanently a little too thin for comfort? _Bo-_ ring.

 

World War II, right. Then the Roswell incident happened, and, well. Memory loss, temporal distortions, and general body horror for years. Simone Rigadeau claims the world ended three or four decades ago, and she is half right. Or maybe a quarter. Time is…broken, a little. Carlos suddenly _really_ does not care.

 

Carlos spends a lot of time with the head teratologist, a young Swedish guy named Nikolaus with thinning hair and an unfortunate case of office-chair avoirdupois. His teeth glow in the dark. The residents of Night Vale, Nikolaus explains, with the few exceptions of Mr. Daniels, the Hooded Figures, and Station Management (among others) are human. He calls them Altered humans, or human beings with a little something else added. Carlos looks away as the teratologist laughs, wondering when the day will come when he wakes up with horns or a fifth DNA nucleobase or squamae that drips blue nitrate.

 

His common sense does not apply here, and he finds that only his sense of the ludicrous can be accepted as rational. For a while he goes about his science, analyzing beer that causes hematoma, or why the speed of light slows down at 5:32 every Saturday morning, feeling the rapture of juicy conundrums, the burst and fizz of knowledge in the desert. But he still feels like something is missing.

 

Then comes Cecil, subtle as a sandstorm.

 

He had never been much for the radio, at first. Seriously, who listens to the radio outside Night Vale anymore? These days it’s all rap and rape and has Night Vale even _heard_ of an iPod? But Cecil’s voice is like a smooth, sharp square of dark chocolate and the mawkish pining is oddly adorable.

 

And then a year later Cecil says, “I can’t,” and Carlos knows he wants to stay.

 

They are different and the same. Carlos knows English, Spanish, and Formulae (he considers it a language of its own). Cecil knows English, Navajo, and basic Latin. Apparently the Night Vale Community College requires at least one dead language as a prerequisite for English lit.

 

Carlos drinks too much coffee, bites his nails, and has permanent dents at his temples from the constant rubbing. Cecil hangs his ties from the shower rail, rubs an alarmingly long scar on his neck when he’s flustered, and is slightly bow-legged. Sometimes Carlos cannot tell, when Cecil flops in and practically oozes himself onto the couch, if it is merely a hard day at the station or Lyme disease. Sometimes Cecil visits the men’s bathroom to play with Khoshekh and his buoyant offspring, forgetting that cat hair sends Carlos into spastic sneezing fits for hours.

 

And sometimes, on the nights when the sky is somewhere between taupe and void, Carlos cooks enchiladas and thinks about Coulomb’s Law. Forces of attraction. He remembers coming here, naively bent on finding the Hows and the Whats of the siren in the sand, only to discover after a year that the answer is there _is_ no real answer. It is as real as that house that does not exist. And that is okay.

 

He remembers that first week. It seems like years ago (and maybe it is); he remembers wanting to run as far as he could in the other direction, back to the mountains and the unbearable _flatness_ where things had at least made _sense,_ and Carlos at present wants to laugh. The people here, he notices, are happy. They don’t _want_ to leave Night Vale. There are black angels and wheat by-products and tiny people with catapults and…peace.

 

Cecil comes to join him in watching the sky, as he often does after dinner. His sleeves are rolled up to his elbows and he is removing his tie, coiling it around long fingers. Cecil’s eyes, their color indistinguishable, are cliquant with desire and his mouth is furled in an impish grin, and Carlos finds himself thinking about how young they are. He himself is thirty-something, but he thinks it will be a long time before he hits forty.

 

Cecil whispers into his ear, using his best Voice. Melted chocolate, warm and soft, slowly rolling down glass. Carlos thinks of teaweed and electrical charges. Forces of attraction. It’s pretty neat, really.

 

So sure, Carlos is a little messed up to have volunteered to come to Night Vale in the first place, and he is probably even more messed up to have stayed.

 

And he is totally okay with that.

 

 

 

 

_End._

 


End file.
